


and what you don't know can't hurt you

by pekorama



Category: IT (2017), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Angst, M/M, part two spoilers, swears
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-10
Updated: 2017-10-10
Packaged: 2019-01-15 13:17:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,279
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12321828
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pekorama/pseuds/pekorama
Summary: Beverly had already moved, and the boys never seemed to find the time anymore to all be there together. Two or three usually, sometimes all six on a good day, but how good could it really be if they were still only six sevenths of a whole?That day was a two-Loser kind of day, but he didn’t know that yet.





	and what you don't know can't hurt you

It was one of those days again. One of those bitter autumn days where the chill in the air reminded Bill just how empty the Barrens were. Reminded Bill that the Losers club had grown fewer and farther between since the summer, cogs in a machine falling apart piece by piece. They all knew but didn’t mention how the good times just weren’t rolling quite like they used to. Beverly had already moved, and the boys never seemed to find the time anymore to all be there together. Two or three usually, sometimes six on a good day, but how good could it really be if they were still only six sevenths of a whole?

That day was a two-Loser kind of day, but he didn’t know that yet. He didn’t think anyone would come at all. He was skipping stones as best as he could across the shallow waters of the Kenduskeag, his eyes glazed, contemplating just giving up waiting and going home. It was getting late, anyways, and his dark green fleece and jeans weren’t enough to keep him warm when he was sitting idly like this.

“Bill?”

Bill started and whipped his head to the source of the voice, missing the fact that his last throw had actually skipped. “S-Stan! You s-scared the shit out of m-me…” The relief was evident in his voice. He missed Stan a lot, he came by the least. Stan gave him a half-smile, shifting uncomfortably from foot to foot. He was dressed as neatly as usual, with his pants longer to suit the weather and an unzipped burgundy jacket. 

“Nobody else here?” His voice was shaky.

“J-j-just us,” Bill said, “Mike was g-gonna come by b-but he had chores.” He looked back at the stack of smooth, rounded rocks that he’d picked out for skipping. He picked up another, glanced at his friend, and held it out to him. “I-is everything-okay?”

Stan seemed caught off guard, even though it would have been easy for anyone to tell, let alone one of his best friends, that he was on edge. “Of course it is, it’s just…” Stan folded his arms tightly, his fingers drumming against his own bicep, listlessly tugging at the fabric of his jacket, “do you… want me here?”

“Why w-wouldn’t I w-want you here?” Bill asked, his tone soft, good-natured. To emphasize his point, he shook his still-outstretched hand in the air, encouraging Stan to take the rock and sit beside him.

“I just. I guess I thought you’d be pissed off at me for being scared this summer,” Stan said as he did, his rock skipping twice, “and I don’t want you to think I didn’t want to help you, or Georgie, or the other kids. I know that’s what I made it seem like.” Bill was watching him intently now, but Stan couldn’t meet his eyes. He drew a long breath and let it curl in a wispy cloud of white from his lips. He looked like Beverly when she took a drag from her cigarette, and he felt a pang of hurt at the thought. Maybe that’s your type, he thought to himself. And then Stan was speaking again, and looking at him this time with earnest, “I really wish I was braver for you.” A hint of embarrassed realization in his eyes, a cough, and then a correction: “For all of you.”

He was sorry. He was sorry? This whole time Bill’s guilt over driving someone he cared about quite a lot into the arms of his worst fears had been gnawing away at him like termites, and Stan was sorry?

“Fuh-fuh-fuh…” The word he was searching for was ‘funny’ as in ‘har-har, funny you should say that’, but when it didn’t come, he settled for a defeated “fuck.” Har-har, funny how things worked out, because that fuck said everything. He grit his teeth, frustrated that his sentence was already all muddled in his throat before he was even a word in, but Stan gave him a patient, reassuring nod, and his frown weakened. Out of all of the Losers, Stan was always the one that made him feel the least pressured to ‘spuh-spuh-spit it out, Buh-buh-Billyboy’. “I thought y-you were m-mad at me for d-dragging you into all this sh-shit. It was s-selfish.” He threw a stone. Just threw it, didn’t even try to skip.

Stan’s concerned eyes searched his face. The crease in his brow said ‘I had no idea you felt like this’ without needing to say it at all. He shook his head, causing a curl to come loose from where it had been neatly combed to the side. Bill’s eyes focused on that curl. “It was not selfish, it was selfless. You were trying to do what nobody else in the town had the guts to do, which was anything at all,” he said, and another stone skipped along, “and it was fate, I think. You know? We’re the lucky seven, Bill. We needed all of us.”

“Shu-sure.” Bill gave up on the stones all together and braced himself instead, already knowing his stutter would wreak havoc with what he planned to say next. “B-b-but f-for the record, yuh-you’re not a cuh-coward. You’re one of the b-bravest puh-puh-puh…” Ah, crumbs. Bill clenched his fists, his mind briefly flooded with his mantra: He thrusts his fists against the posts. Posts. Posts. It’s a p-word, close, but not what he wanted to say. He wanted to say person, and even that wasn’t all he wanted to say… Stan, oh god, Stanley, you’re so much more than you think you are. You’re smart and you’re strong and I don’t want you to leave like she did, not when I’ve always felt for you what I felt for her. There’s a start. And fuck, even if his stutter had magically lifted, he couldn’t have brought himself to say that. He’d never get the chance, but he didn’t know that yet. “Puh… puh…” Spittle bubbled on his lips and the cords of his neck strained visibly as he tried to force the words out of him.

“Person?” Stan offered. His smile was already appreciative. It wasn’t hard to predict what Bill was trying to say.

Bill nodded gratefully. “Y-yeah. Thanks.”

Stanley’s warm smile lingered all too briefly, and then it was gone. Like his own half-finished sentences, Stan’s expressions were easy to read: He doesn’t mean it. He’s just saying that because he’s nice. I’m not even half as brave as Mike or Richie, or Bev for that matter.

And Bill thought ‘he’s wrong about himself, he just doesn’t know that yet’.

“I wuh-went into all this because of Guh-Georgie. And B-Bev, because of her d-dad, I think. A-and E-Eddie’s mom. IT wuh-was already i-in the p-people in our lives, so w-we didn’t really h-have a choice. W-we were all ruh-ruh-running from something. But y-you had the choice t-to walk away, a-and focus on the puh-pressure you were under, and your bar m-mitzvah.” A flicker of hurt crossed Stan’s eyes at the mention of the ceremony, the one Bill had been too proud to attend. “Buh-but you decided to help us. N-not because you h-had to, but b-because you could. I don’t nuh-know about you, but that seems p-pretty brave to me.”

There was a clatter as a pebble tumbled from Stan’s limp hand, and when Bill looked over at his friend, he saw his eyes were red and brimming with tears. He wiped at them desperately with the sleeve of his jacket pulled over the palm of his hand. He had angled himself away so that Bill wouldn’t see.

Bill already knew exactly why he was crying. He knew that Stan was losing sleep. Hell, maybe he hadn’t slept at all. It wasn’t just in the circles under his eyes or in the way he would stare off into nothingness when conversation lulled, but in the fact that Stan’s smiles never reached his eyes anymore. Not since the blood oath. Only Bill had noticed.

Stan said something, but it wasn’t really Stanley, was it? That voice sounded too broken, too empty and quiet and distant. It sounded like a ghost (still insists he sees the ghosts, still insists he sees the ghosts), and for some reason that sent waves of hot dread coursing through the redhead, crawling just beneath his skin. And the ghost said: “I don’t want to feel this way anymore.”

Go to him, god fucking dammit. You’re losing him and you don’t know it yet. Bill climbed closer until he could place his arm around the other boy’s shoulder. (he thrusts his fists against the posts and still insists he sees) The ghost of his friend shook in the autumn air, in the grip of his sadness, in the warm embrace. That ghost of his friend melted into the touch, his head collapsing into the crook of Bill’s shoulder.

Bill thought maybe this was one of those times where saying nothing was actually better. Instead he let his hand slide from the shoulder and down in search of Stan’s trembling hands. When his fingers found purchase, Stan’s squeezed back tight. Don’t you dare let go. (he still insists)

They stayed that way until the tears stopped.

“I’m s-s-sorry I didn’t guh-go,” Bill finally blurted, “to your bar m-mitzvah.”

Stan sniffled, not lifting his head when he replied. “I’m not still mad about that.”

Bill grinned, knowing how stupid this sounded. “Ruh-Richie went! Richie.” This caused Stan to laugh silently, the vibrations spreading from his chest to Bill’s arm.

“You’ve got a point.”

“I wanted to be there for you.” Stan glanced up, and Bill nodded. “I did.”

Stan’s smile widened. “Honestly, I think Richie had more fun than I did, because I-” The Jewish boy interrupted himself with a sudden, uncharacteristic gasp of laughter, “I-I, uh, I held the Torah upside down.” He was grinning as he stared across the babbling stream into the growing shadows. Bill realized with a giddy sort of awe that the fact that he was grinning meant that he was smiling ㅡ the sort of smile that touched his eyes.

“T-Torah? Is that the book?” He made a square shape with his pointer fingers and thumbs.

Stan nodded and wiped his eye with his free hand, the other gripping Bill’s just a little tighter. “I was at a really easy part, too, but I messed up a lot because I was so anxious. You should have seen my dad, he looked about ready to disown me.” He fell silent for a few moments, still smiling contentedly. “And then they cut my dick off.” He punctuated this with a swift, downward chopping motion through the air.

Bill stared at him, wide-eyed with awe, honestly believing for a brief second that he was telling the truth (Bill’s knowledge of Jewish culture was… questionable, mostly because it all came from Richie). Then they both broke out in simultaneous howling laughter.

It was so easy to forget that Stan was just a kid. A kid who dressed and usually acted like a pocket-sized adult but could laugh at his own jokes until he cried. A sad, scared, incredibly brave kid.

When they did stop laughing, it died down to little wheezing, teary-eyed chuckles in between stretches of content silence. Stan forgot all about being scared. That fear was replaced by the pleasant roughness of the hand resting intertwined with his.

That was nice while it lasted, and then it was gone. A biting chill in the air chased them away from the Kenduskeag, just in time to find their way out of the Barrens in the last fading glow of sunset. It painted them orange and red, made everything seem fuzzy, not quite of this world. As they set off down the road together, their hands never left each other. It got dark.

Bill realized pretty early on that he had left Silver behind, but had half the mind to say nothing. He knew if he mentioned it, Stan would insist they go back and get the bike, and then he would have to wheel Silver home, but he couldn’t very well wheel a bike twice his size and hold hands with Stan at the same time, now could he? Silver could be missing by tomorrow morning for all he knew. Bill chose Stan anyways.

Even as they reached Stan’s house, they lingered for a while, careful to keep out of sight.

Don’t you dare let go, Bill.

“I should probably go,” Stan finally said, “… but I’ll see you tomorrow, right?”

Bill smiled thinly, sadly. “W-will I?”

Stan took a few steps, walking backwards, his hand sliding out of Bill’s and immediately missing the contact. “Where else would I be?”

Bill didn’t answer. He just shook his head, shrugged, and shoved his now-cold hands into the pockets of his jeans (he thrust his fists).

“G-good night.”

“Bye, Bill.”

He leaned (against the posts) against the street lamp across from Stan’s house for a while, just thinking. Every time he found himself saying goodbye to Stan, he couldn’t seem to shake the feeling that this was the last time he’d ever see him. It wasn’t, of course, far from it. But the feeling persisted (and still insists).

Stan would lay awake that night missing the feeling of Bill’s hands in his. But Bill lay awake with that awful, sickly pit in his stomach. The feeling remained (still insists) through every goodbye for days, for weeks, months, years.

Until one day, when Bill was right, and it was the last time (he sees the ghosts).

He just didn’t know it yet.


End file.
